Listen
by Cathryn
Summary: Loki muses to Bethany about Bartleby's psyche. That makes more sense if you actually read the fic. Rated PG-13 for language and SLASHY themes.


ffnet

Just thought I'd emphasize it again: Slash. You know, guy/guy stuff. Or, in this case, a guy lusting over another guy. Don't like it, don't read it. But if you do anyway, go ahead and flame me. I could use the laugh.  
  
Also: This fic borrows an idea from Katherine F's "Night Shift." The idea is, essentially, that God sent Bartleby and Loki, in human form, to watch over Bethany during (and possibly after) her pregnancy. You need to know that if this is going to make any sense whatsoever, so all the people who skip over headers are just screwing themselves now. *snerk*  
  
  
  
Loki and Bartleby were sitting out on the front porch in mutual quiet when the sudden wail of a child rent the (relatively) still air. They looked up as one to see an unfamiliar little girl sitting at the edge of the street in front of Bethany's yard, wailing. Without a word, Bartleby got up and headed inside. He emerged a moment later, holding various first aid implements, and made a beeline for the girl just as Bethany's car pulled into the driveway. Bethany got out of her car, pausing to watch for a moment as Bartleby knelt next to the girl and began talking to her gently. Having ascertained to her satisfaction that he had the situation under control, she walked up to the porch.  
  
"What happened?" she asked Loki.  
  
He shrugged. "She was playing or something and I guess she tripped. You know," he said, abruptly changing the subject as he eyed Bethany's softly curved stomach, "you should start thinkin' about lettin' one of us get a job already. You're startin' to show, it's not good for the kid. We're supposed to take care of you, and if that means one of us has to go all fifties sitcom father on you and chain you to the house while we bring home the bacon or whatever, then so be it."  
  
Bethany ignored him with the air of one who has ignored the same speech many times before. She was watching Bartleby take care of the little girl. The girl had stopped crying, and was even giggling a little as Bartleby dabbed at her knee with a cotton ball.  
  
"I've never seen a kid smile during hydrogen peroxide before," she remarked, continuing to ignore Loki as he saved her the trouble of answering him:  
  
"'But you two need to be where I can find you at a moment's notice, and there's no job that carries that guarantee' - huh?" Loki stopped imitating Bethany and glanced out at the scene that she was watching. "Oh, yeah. Bartleby's always liked kids. I don't know how many times I've listened to him go on about humanity in its purest form."  
  
"Yeah?" Bethany prompted, turning her attention to Loki.  
  
It had been nearly five months since God had sent protection to her in the forms of the newly mortal, and highly penitent, Bartleby and Loki. To allay Bethany's doubts, Metatron had visited her. Being as Bethany and her child were the two most important beings on the planet, he had explained, they would need protection. Jay and Silent Bob had their own lives to resume in New Jersey, and God wanted to offer Bartleby and Loki a chance at redemption. Besides that, they were simply the logical choice, being, as they were, former angels with a strong motivation to protect Bethany with everything they had - namely, the chance to return to heaven. Bethany was a little fuzzy on the logic, but apparently it was okay for God Herself to change Her decrees. It didn't count as proving Herself fallible; it was merely changing Her mind. However it worked, Bethany had come to trust her guardians - how could she not, when they had God backing them up?  
  
In those five months, Bethany had gotten to know the decidedly loquacious Loki pretty well; while he was quite respectful toward her, he was also open and liked to talk about whatever struck him at any given moment. Bethany encouraged it, for the most part, valuing the insights into Loki that his ramblings gave her. Bartleby, on the other hand, was quiet, sombre, and withdrawn; Bethany considered herself lucky if she got twenty words each day out of him that were more than just polite greetings. And he _was_ polite, and respectful, and had been damned helpful when Bethany was battling morning sickness, but he offered very little of himself. What Bethany did know about him she had learned from Loki, so whenever he started talking about Bartleby, she shut up and listened.  
  
"Yeah, well, _all_ Grigoris like people," Loki said. "Comes with the whole Watcher gig. But most of 'em like humanity the way people like dumb animals. In both senses of the word," he added. "But Bartleby . . . Bartleby's always had this tendency to feel things more _strongly._ He has a _passion_ for humanity. Even the bad ones. Angels have their own personalities, but they were also created for the jobs they were given. We - they don't just happen to fit the specs. Combine Bartleby's self with what he was made to do, and you get the ideal Grigori. Y'know, love and compassion for humanity and all that shit. And that's exactly the problem. See, back when God was hot-tempered and easily annoyed, He used to send me out smiting left and right. Bartleby watched me do it for I don't know how long. I guess till he just couldn't take it anymore. He jumped on in, and, man, he worked me for _decades. _I kept telling him to lay off at first, but he just refused to let go of it. And in the end . . ." Loki shrugged. "Well, you know the story."  
  
Bethany nodded. "He didn't give up," she said. "You did."  
  
Loki shot her an irritated look, then relaxed when he saw the expression on her face. "You've gotta be the only person on the planet who could turn that into a compliment," he remarked. "I bet it's in the blood." He fell silent for a moment, and Bethany could hear Bartleby and the girl holding a serious discussion on the merits of strip bandages versus round ones.  
  
"Anyway," Loki said briskly. "Enough about you. You wanna hear about Bartleby, don't you?" Bethany blinked, caught off-guard as she always was when Loki had a perceptive moment. He was so good at playing clueless that she often forgot how much he really noticed.  
  
"Yes," she said candidly. "I do."  
  
Loki nodded thoughtfully. "Yeah. He's never exactly been a chatterbox, but he used to actually talk about stuff, to me at least. But, y'know, now - that little kid's gettin' more outta him than he's given to either of us since we came back. But. You don't spend thousands of years at a stretch with someone without getting to know 'em. After the first few centuries, it got so we didn't even _have_ to talk to tell each other stuff. I got so used to that, I . . . kinda stopped listening to him," Loki confessed. "So to speak. I guess I just got too caught up in fuckin' - whatever to notice that he was fuckin' losin' his mind." Loki paused and shook his head. "Not that it matters. I couldn't a' done anything. The only One _who_ could do anything with Bartleby was God, and He was off playing fuckin' skeeball or whatever." A slight shiver passed through Loki, as it always did whenever he caught himself making snide remarks about God. "Uh . . . yeah. Anyway. Bartleby thinks I'm still not listening, but I learned my lesson. I know stuff about him and how he feels that he thinks he's keeping to himself."  
  
He looked up at Bethany earnestly. "He's hurtin' hard over what he did, Bethany. Look, most of the people we killed were sinners. I'm not going to apologize for that. It's how I was made. Just because an angel gets cast out doesn't mean he can stop doing his job. But . . . not all of them were bad people. And them? They died just because they caught Bartleby's eye. He killed a lot of innocents that day, and it's eating him up. It's on his mind all the time." He pointed at Bartleby, who was applying a round bandage to the girl's knee with exaggerated care. "I bet you that right now, while he's taking care of her, he's thinking about the kids that won't be born because of what he did. That passion of his, it makes him a easy target for pain. He feels it quicker, stronger, and longer than anyone I know." He gave Bethany a significant look. "And I know a _lot_ of fuckin' people."  
  
Bethany nodded and remained silent, not daring to so much as reprimand him for his language around her baby, for fear that it would throw him off track and lose her the first opportunity she'd had to really learn about Bartleby.  
  
"I think that's why he lost it," Loki resumed. "Angels . . . Angels _need_ God. Being away from Him, being totally cut off - it hurts. It's pain that no human being could possibly conceive of. Take the worst pain that any human has ever suffered. It's nothing, really, but take it. Imagine feeling it, nonstop, no break, for centuries. You hafta get used to it if you're gonna survive. I did. After a while, it became a part of me, and after a long time, I couldn't remember not feeling it. I always just kinda assumed it was the same for Bartleby. I mean, he kept changin', y'know, but so did I. Adaptation is part of life. I'd do the occasional slaughter of the wicked, y'know, when they were really begging for it, 'cause like I said, I couldn't just stop doing it, and after a while, he stopped objecting. Toward the end there, he even helped. If anything was gonna set off an alarm somewhere in my head, that shoulda been it. But I just figured that he was evolving to fit his life. Like me. But that pain . . . it didn't become him, it - it _took_ him. Kept breaking him, wearing him down. Turning his love for humanity against him. By the time you guys met on the train, he was really fuckin' fragile. Still don't know what you guys talked about, but somethin' you said, I guess it was just that last grain of sand he needed to just . . . to just fuckin' - _break._"  
  
Loki paused with a sigh. Bethany, enthralled, waited to see if he would continue. Whether he had any more to say, though, she would never know, because at that moment a panicked voice distracted them both.  
  
"Betsey! Betsey!"  
  
They looked up to see a man racing up the street toward the girl.  
  
"Daddy!" Betsey called out happily as the man reached her and knelt next to her. "This is Bartleby," she continued cheerfully, "and I hurt my knee and he was nice and he fixed it."  
  
The man gathered Betsey into his arms and stood, relief rolling from him in near-tangible waves.  
  
"Thank you," he said to Bartleby. "I'm Mike Fraser. We're moving in down the street. I just turned my back for a minute, and bam, off she went. Just couldn't wait to explore." As he talked, he looked at Bartleby thoughtfully, seemingly trying to reach some sort of mysterious conclusion. Bartleby pretended not to notice, saying,  
  
"Well, I'm just glad I could help."  
  
Mike nodded. Clearly, he'd reached a conclusion that satisfied him, because he said,  
  
"I guess we picked the right neighborhood, huh, Bets?", accompanying the remark with a distinctly flirtatious look in Bartleby's general direction. Bartleby shifted his weight uncomfortably and muttered something about good people.  
  
Bethany stifled a giggle, remembering her own initial impression of Bartleby, and glanced at Loki. She had to bite her lip to keep from laughing when she saw that he was giving Mike a distinctly dark look, eyes narrowed grimly. She settled instead for an obnoxiously knowing smirk, which was, of course, completely wasted.  
  
Loki got up off the porch and headed across the lawn to the trio with studied casualness. Bethany leaned against the post and watched.  
  
"Hi," he said to Mike. "I'm Loki and that's Bethany," gesturing to her over his shoulder. "You guys need any help moving your stuff?"  
  
To anyone who had merely been paying attention to the words, this would have seen like a perfectly polite greeting and generous offer. However, as Loki spoke, he placed a hand lightly on Bartleby's shoulder and gave Mike an understated but pointed Look. Mike nodded slightly, graciously indicating understanding and acceptance of Loki's claim even as he offered a similarly polite response:  
  
"Thanks, but we're just about finished. I'd like to get the rest done before dark, so I'd better get going. It was nice meeting you all, and thanks for helping Betsey."   
  
"It was no problem," answered Bartleby. "Hope the new place works out for you."  
  
"Byyyye!" Betsey called, waving enthusiastically over her father's shoulder as he started walking back to his house. Bartleby waved back.  
  
Once Mike was beyond hearing range, Bartleby shrugged away Loki's hand.  
  
"Thanks for the save," he said to his friend, "but did you have to be quite so flaming?"  
  
"Flaming!" Loki exclaimed. "_I'm_ flaming? Everyone thinks _you're_ gay and _I'm_ the flamer?"  
  
Bartleby offered him a wry half-smile and turned away, starting up to the house, thus ensuring that Bethany was the only one who saw the shadow of pain that crossed Loki's face.  
  
"Hi, Bethany."  
  
"Hey, Bartleby. Nice job with that little girl. Can't wait to see you in action with this one," Bethany smiled, placing a hand over her stomach. Bartleby smiled back and headed inside. Bethany stared after him, wondering how it was that she'd always managed to miss the anguish that lurked just behind his eyes.  
  
Loki came up the stairs just after him, looking tired and disspirited. Impulsively, Bethany reached out and touched his arm.  
  
"Hey. You're not the only one who stopped listening, you know. He'll come around."   
  
Loki gave her a wan smile. "Thanks, but no he won't. I know him," he answered, and headed inside.  
  
Bethany's eyes narrowed slightly in sudden determination. "Oh, yes, he will," she muttered before following Loki inside.  
  
  
  



End file.
